I've been spending some significant time making ringtones for clients over the last two weeks. We've seen this ringtone wave coming for a while now given that 23% of American mobile phone owners (30 million Americans) downloaded a ring tone between August 2004 and 2005. Internationally, mobile phones will soon outpace computers as the dominant way to access the internet, so customizing a ringtone will soon be common.

Don't just take my word for it. Seth Godin, famous author and top blogger of strategic marketing, thinks ringtones are going to explode: more

I attended a briefing on the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study two weeks ago. It is a must read for any nonprofit online professional because it provides a timely and robust analysis of online fundraising and advocacy programs for nonprofits. It even breaks down email and ROI metrics between nonprofits focused on civil rights, environmental protection, and international aid. With the study, nonprofit online professionals can measure their email marketing programs against the results of these 15 national nonprofit organizations.

There is one grand story to tell after reading the whole report: you have to invest, test, track and target for your online activities to pay off. Don't expect to flip the switch of an online fundraising program and miraculously fundraising will go through the roof. Of course, disasters and emergencies are a rare exception, but most of the organizations doing this work have had online programs for years now. Here is a summary of the key findings of the report: more

Today, JibJab launched a joke-sharing online social network called JokeBox. JibJab founders Evan and Gregg Spiridellis were inspired by their father, a frequent email jokster, to create this hub for storing and sharing jokes of any media persuasion. The site has been in private beta-testing for three months, during which time roughly 40,000 registered members have contributed 25,000 written jokes, photos, audio and video files.

The Spiridellis brothers readily admit they see JokeBox as a necessary secondary revenue stream for JibJab Media, their animation studio famous for the "This Land" short, which has been downloaded over 65 million times. They run their shop pretty lean, with only 7 staff, so there are long lags between projects. In fact, Jokebox.com redirects to JibJab.com, so JokeBox is the online face for JibJab Media. more

I too went to the South by Southwest interactive conference this past week in Austin, Texas. The panel discussions covered a healthy range of topics that could fall under blogging, mobile content and distribution, web 2.0 applications, web design and entrepreneurship for web 2.0 ideas.

I enjoyed almost all the panels I attended. Unfortunately, some of the presenters were more interested in hyping their own sites rather than educating the audience. I know, it goes with the territory since most bloggers and entrepreneurs need all the attention they can get just to make ends meet. I can tolerate some buzzing, but the "How To Add Video To Your Blog panel" was a whole lot o' grandstanding and not a lot of best practices. more

I've recently seen some news that caught my attention. I like to keep my posts short and sweet, so here is a Hershey's kiss:

NBC Universal to Offer SNL skits on iTunes
If you haven't seen this skit from Chris Parnel and Andy Samberg, you should take a minute out of your exhausting day of crackberrying. I'm a little surprised it took NBC and SNL this long to realize they had a whole new revenue stream from selling skits online.

From MediaPost on 1/11/06 (subscription req.):

NBC Universal, which has been offering a free "Saturday Night Live" skit up on Apple's iTunes music store since late last year, Tuesday announced plans to begin bundling "Saturday Night Live" skits with existing content for retail sale on iTunes. more

On September 28, I listened to a key note from Cammie Dunaway, CMO of Yahoo!, at the OMMA East conference. She gave an engaging summary of the online advertising campaign for Yahoo!'s recent music service launch. Cammie was a great speaker particularly because she spoke with a lot of energy in her voice and explained the reasons for many creative choices she made.

For example, the online ads featured celebrities like Shakira and Missy Elliot because Yahoo! has seen much better results with ads featuring photos of celebrities. No surprise, but it's always good for those rules you take for granted to be reinforced by recent experience.

I especially liked her mnemonic device to remember best practices with online advertising:

Integrated more

I am always impressed by the American philanthropic ethic during times of need. Unfortunately, we have had several disasters over the last 5 years that have tested Americans proclivity to donate online, as opposed to the traditional check or credit card contribution.

The Associated Press reports that almost 53% of donations to the Red Cross for Katrina assistance have come online: more

I orginally posted this as a comment to a DCist post, but I thought I would repost my comment. The background is that Linda Cropp, the DC City Council Chairman and candidate for DC Mayor, has just launched her first advertising in the form of posters. DCist covers the story here. My comment follows:

I think the signs are great. They will stand out and separate her from the pack of Mayoral hopefulls. The signs also begin to position her campaign as the insurgent campaign already because she is using untraditional message strategy. This plays to her strength as the only woman in the field. more

Patrick Ruffini, a former Bush/Cheney '04 Webmaster, has created the first 2008 Presidential Wire, an aggregator for all blog posts and MSM stories covering potential presidential contenders of both the Democratic and Republican parties. At least, it's the first I've seen. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for all the stories or click on the "Build Your Own" function to custom build a feed by contender or source.

The Wire is still in beta, so we'll keep track of how the technology progresses. Patrick includes some other bells and whistles like Hot Topics and Hot Pols in the blogosphere. It won't be too long before a Democratic technologist offers the same functionality online. Does anyone know of a Democratic focused site providing this service? (Hat tip to Rick Klau) more