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Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine Vol 02 Issue 06
------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine -------
Vol 2, Issue 6
The springtime weather here in Ann Arbor has been anything but.
Or, for those of us who've lived in Michigan for any length of
time, we realize that it is pretty much par for the course.
Either way, we've been seeing a heck of a lot of snow, and I'm
getting just a little tired of it. I want to get out in my
gardens to see what's growing.
If you're feeling the winter blahs like I am, one way to get past
it is to throw a party. Get some snacks, queue up Barry Manilow
and ABBA on the MP3 player, and you are ready to go! Oh, I guess
you'd better invite some people, too. Guess what? There are
tools to help you. We'll take a look at a couple.
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In This Issue...
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1. Article: You Are Cordially Invited
2. Blog Posts
3. Shameless Self-Promotion
4. The Fine Print
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1. Article: You Are Cordially Invited
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Once a quarter or so, I invite a group of friends and associates
to my home for a little gathering. We sit around eating
ladyfinger sandwiches and drinking cups of tea. We discuss the
arts and local political issues while listening to Mozart and
Beethoven.
Right.
We actually get together, eat pizza and other greasy snacks and
play computer games which involve killing each other --
repeatedly. Despite the (possibly) less-than-salutary behavior,
we all have a good time. To organize the event, I've come to
rely on an online invitation system. I've been using Evite, but
I just found a new one which may be my new favorite.
First, let's talk about Evite (http://evite.com/). Evite is the
granddaddy of online invitation tools. It's gone through an
upgrade or two over the years, but it still provides a fairly
good product. Evite has all the essentials, of course -- create
an invitation, list the invitees, accept RSVPs, etc. It has an
address book feature that makes keeping track of your guest lists
fairly easy. For those who've never received an evite before,
the recipients get an email message which tells them to go to the
Evite site and give their response (yes, no, or maybe).
There are a few things which bother me about Evite. First, the
message that it sends to the recipients doesn't have any
information about the actual event. If you want to look up that
information -- even after you've RSVP'd -- you have to go back to
the site. There's a reason for this: The site has a lot of ads.
That's how Evite makes its money. I guess I can't blame them,
but it can be annoying. It's especially annoying when your
invitation is advertising something you don't particularly want
to support. For example, one time my LAN Party invitation was
plastered with Victoria's Secret ads. Now, I'm guessing the guys
I invited didn't mind too much, but it really wasn't in keeping
with the theme for the evening. You put up with it because up
until recently you didn't have much of a choice.
Then came Socializr.
I read about Socializr (http://socializr.com/) in Wired magazine
and thought I would check it out. It has a lot of the same basic
features as Evite. They decided to throw in a few extras,
though. Creating your own invitation design is remarkably simple
(especially after I struggled repeatedly to set up a custom
design on Evite). They also don't appear to have any advertising
on the site. (Don't ask me how they are paying for all of this.)
You can add video and audio to the invitation. Also -- and this
is a big one -- the invitation email, which gets sent to the
recipient list, includes the information about the event.
Socializr isn't perfect, of course. By sending the event
information to the recipients, they are no longer required to
visit the invitation and actually RSVP. Also, it's missing a
feature which I find indispensable. It doesn't email the host
when individual people do RSVP (one way or the other) -- though
this has been added to the "to do" list, as I understand.
All in all, it's good to see that there's a little competition in
this area. It can only lead to better services for all of us. I
think I might give Socializr a try when I sent out the invites
for my next gathering.
If you use a different invitation facility, I would love to hear
about it. Drop me a line at gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com.
Copyright 2008, Greg Peters
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2. Blog Posts
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Links to posts on the "Clearing Up the Confusion" Blog from the
last year:
Monday, March 17, 2008 -- One Step at a Time
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2008/03/one-step-at-time.html
"My daughter, Kaylie, taught me a lesson this morning about
creating my web presence...."
Saturday, March 08, 2008 -- Preparing
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2008/03/preparing.html
"I've been thinking a lot about systems lately. I've been working
on a system to analyze a new hosting service to see how it has
been configured. Knowing this, I can tweak my projects to work
properly on any given system."
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3. Shameless Self-Promotion
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The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg
Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data
Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better
web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us
on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your
webmaster.
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4. The Fine Print
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