Around the Office: Social media not cause for riot, a look at remarketing, more

Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week.

We’ve been hearing a lot this week about the riots in London. Daveed found it interesting that the British Prime Minister David Cameron is quick to blame Social Media for the unrest in the UK, but he should really be looking at the root causes of the disorder and chaos. In a Guardian editorial, well-known comedian Russell Brand makes a serious attempt to understand why so many people, especially youths, feel disconnected from the cities where they live. He comes to the conclusion: “If we don’t want our young people to tear apart our communities then don’t let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.”

Brent has been loving the concept of remarketing, which lets marketers show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website. Remarketing is another tool to help match the right people with the right message, and some think of it as a way to get a second chance to convert a potential customer after they’ve left your site. But once you’re aware of remarketing, Brent says, it becomes apparent how many ads are for sites you’re already visited.

Kobayashi Online has been raving about its hosted Microsoft Lync solution from ThinkTel, a Canadian leader in IP-based business communications. As Brent explains, the VoIP solution used at the office actually looks and feels like a regular desktop phone setup. Plus, it features integration with Microsoft’s Outlook email software and Microsoft Exchange. This makes the team more organized, and actually saves the company money.

Are images slowing your website down? David thinks that CSS 3 shapes will help reduce our dependence on images, and still let us design attractive webpages. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that not all of the code works in every Web browser, so we’re likely not going to say goodbye to JPGs, GIFs, and PNGs any time soon.