Now appearing in my e-mail signature

December 6 2007

A note made the rounds in IBM over the last couple of weeks, mentioning a new feature from Feedburner.com.  It seems that, just for registering your feed through their site, they'll give you some HTML code to create banners and e-mail signatures featuring the latest from your weblog.

From my weblog: edbrill.com

I added their code to my HTML signature -- once I figured out that the click-through URL redirects directly to the blog.  Very cool!

Find out more about Feedburner's Headline Animator here.  Another friendly service from another Google acquisition.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Blogging  Add/View Comments [19]

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  1. 1  David Gursky  | 12/6/2007 10:32:33 AM

    Reminds me of the famous quote of Golda Meir.

    "Don't be humble. You're not that great." ;-)

  1. 2  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 12/6/2007 10:48:45 AM

    Indeed very cool. Allowed by IBM?:-)

  1. 3  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/6/2007 10:51:39 AM

    @2 why wouldn't it be?

  1. 4  Bruce Elgort http://ideajam.net | 12/6/2007 11:15:40 AM

    Now this raises a question I have been dealing with lately -

    "Are companies requiring staff to have corporate approved email signatures?"

    My company is now requiring us to follow very strict signature guidelines including font size, color etc. What are you seeing?

  1. 5  Craig Wiseman http://www.wiseman.la/cpw | 12/6/2007 11:20:33 AM

    Going back in time: { Link }

  1. 6  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 12/6/2007 11:33:32 AM

    @3 & 4: Some companies do dictate signatures.

    (1) It can be a branding issue. Keeping people on message with company approved logos, taglines, etc.

    (1a) Similarly related, corporate communications. A signature like this one becomes a living breathing piece of an otherwise static e-mail. Every person that receives that e-mail will have that feeder running when they open that e-mail. Worst case scenario: What if in this case, Ed has a headline that relates to a customer. Murphy's law says that customer will see it at the worst possible time.

    (2) It can also be a financial issue. If you assume that mode average e-mail is 1k-2k in size, then by adding a let's 5k-10k signature (graphics being the largest consumer of size), then your average e-mail size just multiplied by 5, maybe more.

    (3) Security - Regardless of how wonderful Lotus security is, I'm sure some administrators are not fond of mortal end-users "running code" for lack of a better term, in their e-mail signatures.

  1. 7  Kevin Mort  | 12/6/2007 11:43:08 AM

    @4 - Bruce, yes we have some dictated signatures now. However, they don't seem to be too well monitored.

    I notice that Google bought FeedBurner. Gee, go figure.

    K.

  1. 8  Timothy Briley  | 12/6/2007 11:55:06 AM

    @4 - In my humble opinion, email sig's quoting famous people have no business in corporate communications. It reeks of being unprofessional, not unlike someone who fills their cubicle with stuffed animals.

    I have a coworker from whom I receive about five emails a day. Seeing his Lincoln quote each and every time got really old. We finally harassed him into removing it.

    On the other hand, I have no problem with someone who has an email sig for a personal account.

    Just my opinion.

  1. 9  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/6/2007 12:40:02 PM

    @5 /8 I'm not quoting anyone famous, only myself :)

    @4 /6 Under German law, it has recently been determined that an e-mail signature MUST be present and must contain certain information about the e-mail author, including their backup/manager and other data. At least that is how IBM (and other large corporates) have interpreted this. I am sure independent consultants would have a different perspective :)

    @6 also, I never automatically put a signature on a mail, I only added it when appropriate. And I delete the graphic if it is irrelevant as well.

  1. 10  Kevin Mort  | 12/6/2007 1:15:22 PM

    @8 - I tend to agree. However, this isn't without some heated discussion.

    Personally I prefer and think everyone should list basic contact information in their sig, such as phone number.

    The last time I remember the discussion happening here, there was talk about certifications & such being listed. The decision was not to allow them. However, they did allow things like PhD. Needless to say there were some who thought their cert titles were equally notable.

    My default is to include the sig. Occasionally I might remove it, but it doesn't have a lot of misc. information like a quote.

  1. 11  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 12/6/2007 2:46:53 PM

    @2 Ed - I was alluding to what Bruce addresses directly...

  1. 12  Jim Casale  | 12/6/2007 2:55:12 PM

    Ed,

    Looks great. Now just get Mary Beth to have html signatures go with you when you switch workstations/laptops :-)

  1. 13  Bruce Elgort http://ideajam.net | 12/6/2007 3:08:14 PM

    @12,

    Which is the number one now on Idea Jam:

    { Link }

  1. 14  Steven  | 12/7/2007 8:52:33 AM

    We're having an issue with internal contractors who have accounts on our agency email system who put their corporate info on their signature line (logs, web pages, etc). So much so that when you reading their email, you can't even tell they work here! I see it as unprofessional, others don't seem to see an issue, but I feel it is not our responsibility to advertise their company for them. Kinda like the same way we took the Sent from Blackberry tag line off all our Blackberries.

  1. 15  Per Andersen http://www.crossware.co.nz | 12/7/2007 4:04:44 PM

    @ 4/9 Just to clarify the seriousness of the discussion. The European Union several years ago agreed on a new ammendment that from 1 january 2007 all member states are required to have a law about electronic communication. It states that the companies registered address its registration number and the office where the company has been registered have to be on all emails and web sites. This law has now been adopted by several countries incl UK, Germany and many others in EU. So the problem is not just a coporate standard its actually a legal issue to prevent employees to mess around with their signatures.

    So I'm sorry to say Ed that IBM as many other companies in EU aren't compliant with their email signatures in these countries.

    I know its a little marketing (sorry) but Crossware has created a corporate strength signature solution where the signature is appended on the server preventing employees to tamper with their signatures. As it can be configured with html the feed could easily be put in. This would also prevent the issue that Henry has about size at least the internal traffic is not beefed up with huge html signatures.

    This would also solve Jim issues @12 bout signatures on different workstations/DWA/Blackberry etc and also @14 as all local signatures would be disabled.....again sorry for the marketing but there are actually solutions out there can do the stuff and make the emails compliant.

  1. 16  Dvir Reznik http://dvirreznik.blogspot.com | 12/7/2007 6:21:07 PM

    Ed

    This is a very cool edition to my email signature...

    Thanks for the tip !

    { Link }

    Dvir.

  1. 17  Gareth Howell  | 12/12/2007 7:00:36 AM

    I quickly stopped putting HTML in signature lines ages ago as too many emails were being stopped by corporate firewalls.

    On the issue of the EU labelling requirements: it's much better practice to have such mandatory labelling applied by the system, rather than leaving it up to the user.

    Gareth

  1. 18  edd http://none | 2/13/2008 11:21:25 AM

    I've created html file to use as signature

    when inserted in lotus notes 7 (the created html file seems corrupt fonts and font size are diturbed)

    When I use same html file in other LN client it works OK.

    My guess is there must be a simple setting in notes (perhaps notes.ini) to overcome this is there any body with suggestions?

    everything is set to mime settings etc.

    Comparison between different notes clients did not give resolution.

    Thanking you in advance for your help

    With best regards,

    Edd

  1. 19  Felicity Brightwater  | 6/20/2010 6:44:59 PM

    Sorry to revisit such an old thread, but was reading on the web about email disclaimers for the UK and what the requirements are. It certainly makes for interesting reading.

    { Link }

    This page from UK law firm Pinsent Masons LLP states that "The maximum fine for non-compliance is currently £1,000. With effect from 1st October 2008, an additional daily fine of up to £300 per day can be imposed for any continuing breach."

    So based on my quick calculation, any company still in breach of the law could potentially be fined up to 200,000 GBP!

    @15 - Per, I do hope that IBM etc have got proper disclaimers in place!