My two year old daughter had strep last week and we gave her amoxicillin to treat it. She felt better in a few days, but was waking up agitated in the middle of the night with stomach cramps and she was crying, which she never does normally.
I called the nurse at her Dr office and she said although it is cause for concern, to continue giving it to her for the remaining 3 days of the 10 day treatment. It was against my better judgment and we stopped giving it to her.
It had been 8 days since we all slept through the night, but last night was the first restful night since we stopped giving it to her.
It's hard being a parent and deciding what's best for your child, but when they are in pain and don't need to be, it's not even an issue.
I guess I'm most upset that I have discovered that doctors and nurses are just people and not superpeople whom I grew up thinking could solve every health problem. As a parent, we have to make educated decisions and guesses, like they do, about what is best for our health and for our family's health.
Never second guess your gut feelings and instincts. I know I won't!
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Online Marketing and Smaller Businesses
DECEMBER 20, 2005
About two-thirds of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) use online marketing or plan to start in the next six months, according to a new report.
Frank N. Magid Associates surveyed a national sample of 1,060 for-profit small- and medium-sized businesses between September 12th and October 11th, 2005. A little over one-half of these respondents were from a registered users list of AllBusiness.com, an online resource for businesses that sponsored the study.
The data implies that only 22% of SMBs use the Internet for marketing. Of these, just over 60% employ e-mail marketing, while 56% use search engine optimization, 36% have banner ads, and 25% use pay-per-click advertising. Most of these organizations — 74% — are planning to increase their online marketing spending, although 43% of SMBs who are not using online marketing say they are planning to in the next 6 months.
However, a study by Interland indicates that SMBs rate other, non-Web related factors as more important, or just as important, when it comes to business success. For example, 55% of US SMBs surveyed said that community relations were critical, compared to 47% who cited a Web site. Public relations, direct mail and yellow pages were all deemed more important marketing tools than e-mail marketing. While converts to online marketing seem enthusiastic about it, it is clear that SMBs as a whole have not yet jumped wholeheartedly into the online realm when it comes to promoting their products.
Outside the realm of marketing, Magid found that over four-fifths of SMBs credit the Internet with improving communications in their company, while about three-fifths said that the Internet opened new markets for them, increased competition and lowered their costs. Interestingly, less than one-third said that the Internet improved employee performance, perhaps reflecting concern over employees being distracted from work by surfing the Web.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003731
©2005 eMarketer Inc. All rights reserved
About two-thirds of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) use online marketing or plan to start in the next six months, according to a new report.
Frank N. Magid Associates surveyed a national sample of 1,060 for-profit small- and medium-sized businesses between September 12th and October 11th, 2005. A little over one-half of these respondents were from a registered users list of AllBusiness.com, an online resource for businesses that sponsored the study.
The data implies that only 22% of SMBs use the Internet for marketing. Of these, just over 60% employ e-mail marketing, while 56% use search engine optimization, 36% have banner ads, and 25% use pay-per-click advertising. Most of these organizations — 74% — are planning to increase their online marketing spending, although 43% of SMBs who are not using online marketing say they are planning to in the next 6 months.
However, a study by Interland indicates that SMBs rate other, non-Web related factors as more important, or just as important, when it comes to business success. For example, 55% of US SMBs surveyed said that community relations were critical, compared to 47% who cited a Web site. Public relations, direct mail and yellow pages were all deemed more important marketing tools than e-mail marketing. While converts to online marketing seem enthusiastic about it, it is clear that SMBs as a whole have not yet jumped wholeheartedly into the online realm when it comes to promoting their products.
Outside the realm of marketing, Magid found that over four-fifths of SMBs credit the Internet with improving communications in their company, while about three-fifths said that the Internet opened new markets for them, increased competition and lowered their costs. Interestingly, less than one-third said that the Internet improved employee performance, perhaps reflecting concern over employees being distracted from work by surfing the Web.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003731
©2005 eMarketer Inc. All rights reserved
Monday, December 19, 2005
Small Internet Retailers Are Using Web Tools to Level the Selling Field
E-Commerce Report from The New York Times
By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: December 19, 2005
AMAZON, Walmart.com and other online retailing giants have always had upstarts nipping at their heels. But the little guys are starting to bite harder.
Just how sharp their teeth are, however, is a matter of some debate.
Of the $26 billion in sales that are projected for Internet retailers this holiday season, about 45 percent will go to small retailers, according to Forrester Research, up from 42 percent last year. Even so, with revenues starting to flatten at eBay, the site so many of them use to market their wares, some analysts doubt they will ever be able to break through the 50 percent mark.
But other analysts are not so sure. In the fast-changing world of Internet commerce, they say, smaller merchants have gained two important advantages: Google and consumers who are fussier than ever.
"The game has changed," said Gene Alvarez, an analyst with Gartner, a technology consulting firm.
In years past, any retailer could put up a Web site fairly easily, although it had little chance of attracting the attention of Web browsers unless it had enough money to advertise on well-known sites like AOL and MSN. Yahoo and Amazon, which have long sold cheap Internet storefronts to small businesses, sweetened the deal by listing the businesses on their sites in return for a sales commission.
But that exposure, while significant, pales in comparison to the publicity Web merchants can now gain by spending a few nickels per click on a text ad on Google. "Before, people couldn't find these smaller guys," Mr. Alvarez said. "But now these stores can be much more easily discovered on Google."
At the same time, consumers are displaying a growing appreciation for small online retailers. According to the Kelsey Group, a media consulting firm, the portion of Internet searches that include local elements like "dry cleaners and Greenwich Village" or "art galleries in Easton" has doubled in the last year to 20 percent.
One reason for that, no doubt, is the spread of high-speed Internet connections, which allow users to click through multiple merchants without waiting hours for Web pages to load.
All of which leads to another phenomenon that could further threaten the dominance of the big players - simplified e-commerce software with the potential to lure hordes of hitherto reluctant merchants onto the Internet.
According to eBay, nearly 650,000 small businesses in the United States have an online presence, a sizable figure but a tiny fraction of the 7.5 million companies that the Kelsey Group estimates market most of their goods directly to consumers. Many of the holdouts have resisted the Web because they deem the transition to be too difficult, too expensive or both. But now, Yahoo Stores, ProStores from eBay, NetSuite and other companies that help businesses operate online hope to change the minds of the hesitant with software and services that are cheaper and easier to use.
"We're moving into the next generation for small and medium-sized businesses who want to sell online," said Mr. Alvarez of Gartner. "Even a one-person shop can open an online store that's much more refined than it would've been a few years ago."
Liz Herbert, a Forrester analyst, said the biggest change in e-commerce software in the last few years was that it no longer comes in a box. It is delivered online, so businesses do not need technology specialists to install and run the company's system.
EBay has for years offered sellers the chance to set up their own ministores, called storefronts, in this fashion, but the company this year intensified its efforts to reach small businesses that might not be interested in selling solely on its site. In January, it bought Kurant, an e-commerce software company, for an undisclosed sum; this year it renamed the service ProStores and upgraded the software with added features.
According to Chris Tsakalakis, eBay's senior director of stores and platforms, the ProStores service, which costs from $7 to $250 monthly, gives sellers templates to use in setting up a store, and will carry an online catalog of 10 items or more. For those who pay $30 or more a month, the service includes a personalized Web address, a secure checkout process and a selection of more sophisticated business tools, like those that help managers improve the store's rankings on search engine results.
Such software tools sound like an obvious place for Google's engineers to focus, particularly if the company wants to attract more local businesses online so they will buy more Google ads. But Google - which last month began giving away software to help Internet managers analyze their site traffic, but has not otherwise pushed into e-commerce services - does not offer live customer service, and this is one market where such service is critical, executives said.
"We have hundreds of live agents that are highly trained, answering questions around the clock," said Rich Riley, vice president and general manager of Yahoo Small Business. "That gives us a real head start."
And increasingly, these services include more than just the ability to post a Web site and accept transactions. NetSuite, a privately held company co-founded by Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle's chief executive, and Evan Goldberg, one of Oracle's chief technologists, has improved its tools for companies that want to manage their entire business - including payroll, shipping and marketing - through the Internet.
For some retailers, like Mess Makeup, a New York seller of cosmetics, that is the most important feature in the latest incarnation of e-commerce services. "I could go to the Bahamas, pull out my laptop, look at inventory, see how many leads came in, track people's shipping, and everything's extremely user-friendly," said Adam Furman, a former software consultant who co-founded Mess Makeup two months ago.
Mr. Furman, who pays NetSuite about $1,000 a month for one of its more sophisticated service offerings, said he would have had to spend $500,000 to $1 million to develop the same technology on his own a few years ago. "And we would've needed to hire a tech team of our own," he said. "Now we can concentrate more on just selling makeup and building our business."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/technology/19ecom.html
By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: December 19, 2005
AMAZON, Walmart.com and other online retailing giants have always had upstarts nipping at their heels. But the little guys are starting to bite harder.
Just how sharp their teeth are, however, is a matter of some debate.
Of the $26 billion in sales that are projected for Internet retailers this holiday season, about 45 percent will go to small retailers, according to Forrester Research, up from 42 percent last year. Even so, with revenues starting to flatten at eBay, the site so many of them use to market their wares, some analysts doubt they will ever be able to break through the 50 percent mark.
But other analysts are not so sure. In the fast-changing world of Internet commerce, they say, smaller merchants have gained two important advantages: Google and consumers who are fussier than ever.
"The game has changed," said Gene Alvarez, an analyst with Gartner, a technology consulting firm.
In years past, any retailer could put up a Web site fairly easily, although it had little chance of attracting the attention of Web browsers unless it had enough money to advertise on well-known sites like AOL and MSN. Yahoo and Amazon, which have long sold cheap Internet storefronts to small businesses, sweetened the deal by listing the businesses on their sites in return for a sales commission.
But that exposure, while significant, pales in comparison to the publicity Web merchants can now gain by spending a few nickels per click on a text ad on Google. "Before, people couldn't find these smaller guys," Mr. Alvarez said. "But now these stores can be much more easily discovered on Google."
At the same time, consumers are displaying a growing appreciation for small online retailers. According to the Kelsey Group, a media consulting firm, the portion of Internet searches that include local elements like "dry cleaners and Greenwich Village" or "art galleries in Easton" has doubled in the last year to 20 percent.
One reason for that, no doubt, is the spread of high-speed Internet connections, which allow users to click through multiple merchants without waiting hours for Web pages to load.
All of which leads to another phenomenon that could further threaten the dominance of the big players - simplified e-commerce software with the potential to lure hordes of hitherto reluctant merchants onto the Internet.
According to eBay, nearly 650,000 small businesses in the United States have an online presence, a sizable figure but a tiny fraction of the 7.5 million companies that the Kelsey Group estimates market most of their goods directly to consumers. Many of the holdouts have resisted the Web because they deem the transition to be too difficult, too expensive or both. But now, Yahoo Stores, ProStores from eBay, NetSuite and other companies that help businesses operate online hope to change the minds of the hesitant with software and services that are cheaper and easier to use.
"We're moving into the next generation for small and medium-sized businesses who want to sell online," said Mr. Alvarez of Gartner. "Even a one-person shop can open an online store that's much more refined than it would've been a few years ago."
Liz Herbert, a Forrester analyst, said the biggest change in e-commerce software in the last few years was that it no longer comes in a box. It is delivered online, so businesses do not need technology specialists to install and run the company's system.
EBay has for years offered sellers the chance to set up their own ministores, called storefronts, in this fashion, but the company this year intensified its efforts to reach small businesses that might not be interested in selling solely on its site. In January, it bought Kurant, an e-commerce software company, for an undisclosed sum; this year it renamed the service ProStores and upgraded the software with added features.
According to Chris Tsakalakis, eBay's senior director of stores and platforms, the ProStores service, which costs from $7 to $250 monthly, gives sellers templates to use in setting up a store, and will carry an online catalog of 10 items or more. For those who pay $30 or more a month, the service includes a personalized Web address, a secure checkout process and a selection of more sophisticated business tools, like those that help managers improve the store's rankings on search engine results.
Such software tools sound like an obvious place for Google's engineers to focus, particularly if the company wants to attract more local businesses online so they will buy more Google ads. But Google - which last month began giving away software to help Internet managers analyze their site traffic, but has not otherwise pushed into e-commerce services - does not offer live customer service, and this is one market where such service is critical, executives said.
"We have hundreds of live agents that are highly trained, answering questions around the clock," said Rich Riley, vice president and general manager of Yahoo Small Business. "That gives us a real head start."
And increasingly, these services include more than just the ability to post a Web site and accept transactions. NetSuite, a privately held company co-founded by Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle's chief executive, and Evan Goldberg, one of Oracle's chief technologists, has improved its tools for companies that want to manage their entire business - including payroll, shipping and marketing - through the Internet.
For some retailers, like Mess Makeup, a New York seller of cosmetics, that is the most important feature in the latest incarnation of e-commerce services. "I could go to the Bahamas, pull out my laptop, look at inventory, see how many leads came in, track people's shipping, and everything's extremely user-friendly," said Adam Furman, a former software consultant who co-founded Mess Makeup two months ago.
Mr. Furman, who pays NetSuite about $1,000 a month for one of its more sophisticated service offerings, said he would have had to spend $500,000 to $1 million to develop the same technology on his own a few years ago. "And we would've needed to hire a tech team of our own," he said. "Now we can concentrate more on just selling makeup and building our business."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/technology/19ecom.html
Small Business Marketing Help is Here
As a business to business marketer, I have garnered much experience in the areas of technology with a splash of agency work as well. I am currently a one person marketing department and I handle all aspects of corporate marketing communications. I handle advertising (both print and online), public relations, trade shows, marketing collateral and all marketing projects for a software company.
I have recently started working freelance on small business marketing projects for some local companies. It is amazing all of the companies out there who are looking for marketing professionals for projects but who do not have the budget or workload to staff a full time marketer.
With that in mind, I have started freelance marketing for small businesses. Jen Marketing is my new creation designed to help entrepreneurs and small businesses handle their advertising, marketing and PR on a project basis. Looking for a freelance marketer? Seeking a marketing consultant? Need help with some projects that you don't have time for? Need help writing and distributing a press release? Just need some research done? Give me a shout. I can help with your small business marketing and small business advertising needs large or small.
Jen Marketing.com freelance project marketer - all things marketing. Marketing, advertising, events, web research, PR, Collateral, Web marketing, flyers, newsletters & more! Because you have work to do. Let's get started.
Jen Marketing. Do More.
www.jenmarketing.com
Freelance marketer
Project marketer
Marketing consultant
Advertising consultant
PR consultant
Trade show coordinator
Small business marketer
Small business advertiser
Small business public relations
I have recently started working freelance on small business marketing projects for some local companies. It is amazing all of the companies out there who are looking for marketing professionals for projects but who do not have the budget or workload to staff a full time marketer.
With that in mind, I have started freelance marketing for small businesses. Jen Marketing is my new creation designed to help entrepreneurs and small businesses handle their advertising, marketing and PR on a project basis. Looking for a freelance marketer? Seeking a marketing consultant? Need help with some projects that you don't have time for? Need help writing and distributing a press release? Just need some research done? Give me a shout. I can help with your small business marketing and small business advertising needs large or small.
Jen Marketing.com freelance project marketer - all things marketing. Marketing, advertising, events, web research, PR, Collateral, Web marketing, flyers, newsletters & more! Because you have work to do. Let's get started.
Jen Marketing. Do More.
www.jenmarketing.com
Freelance marketer
Project marketer
Marketing consultant
Advertising consultant
PR consultant
Trade show coordinator
Small business marketer
Small business advertiser
Small business public relations
Friday, December 16, 2005
I got my iPod. You didn't get one.
Glory day. I got my 30GB video iPod and I am in heaven. It rocks. I also bought the kit with all the cables that you need to play it in your car, on your stereo and listen with 2 people. I have all of my music and pictures on it. You can show slide shows on tv to music, put your calendar on it, your contacts from Outlook. It even has games and a timer on it. Christmas came early in our household!
Between this and our satellite radio that is due anyday, we will be set. No more boring radio for us. No more songs overplayed to the point of no return! Control is back in our hands! Victory is ours!
www.apple.com
Between this and our satellite radio that is due anyday, we will be set. No more boring radio for us. No more songs overplayed to the point of no return! Control is back in our hands! Victory is ours!
www.apple.com
Saturday, December 10, 2005
U2 is the band of our generation
I am 34 years old and I have grown up with U2. Go ahead. Call them a band that has not affected you in some way shape or form, and I will work with you on this. I am sorry but there isno excuse but to know this band and the beaty it brings to your world. Rock on. For now, we live here.
www.u2.com
www.u2.com
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